Reflections of an integral mind and heart on life, love, sex, God, healing, psychotherapy and everything.

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Monday, November 15, 2010

Past Lives (Book Excerpt)

Hi,
This is Tana. Today I would like to introduce you to an excerpt from my book "Mystic Lover", which I am writing as part of NaNoWriMo contest (National Novel Writer's Month). The novel is based on my own experience, and turned into fiction. The excerpt is my own journey with Past Lives and Reincarnation therapy. Enjoy!

Past Lives
"Mystic Lover - There's More to Touch than Meets the Eye"

“What do you want to work on next?” Orna sat at the end of the therapy table, her hands holding each other as she seriously looked at Tammy’s face. Tammy sat on the table, not having a specific intention on her mind other than heal and grow.

“You solved the depression and anxiety; your menses are now regular and completely free of pain, and your digestion works like clockwork.”

Tammy nodded in agreement.

“What else would you like to address?”

“My appearance, Orna. I want to address the weight issue.”

“What exactly is it that you want to achieve? Do you want to loose weight, or to love and accept yourself the way your body is right now?”

“That’s a tough question. I want both.”

Orna looked intently for a silent minute, and declared: “I think you are now ready for reincarnation therapy”

Tammy was startled. She had mixed feelings about it, apprehension and curious anticipation in the same time. But she agreed.

The session started with an interview. Orna recorded all the facts: date and place of birth. Were there siblings? Was she a planned pregnancy, or an accident? Was the father present at the time of the birth? What were the earliest memories she could recall? Were any memories Tammy had from the time prior to her birth? What does she know of her mother’s experience of the pregnancy? What was the relationship between her parents like?

The next week, Tammy came to the session in tears.

“What’s going on?” inquired Orna.

“I’ve got enough of working at the Bank!” Tamar blurted.

“What happened?”

“It’s the work pressure, the office politics, and the worse, I just don’t belong there. I am asked to use strengths that I don’t have, to do things I don’t believe in, like selling life insurance and credit cards. The best of my qualities are useless at work. I feel trapped, like a slave, like a hostage in there”

“Let’s work with this feeling” said Orna, standing up. “Lie down” she invited Tammy, standing to the left side of the therapy table, near her head.

“Where in your body do you have this feeling of being trapped, like a slave, like a hostage? Connect with the feeling and tell me where it is.”

“It’s right here, in my chest and my stomach”

“What does it feel like?” asked Orna. “Describe it to me”

“It’s …heavy, like a pressure…it’s weighing me down. I can’t breathe…It’s like a block of steel, hard and heavy…”

“When was a significant time in your life when you had the same kind of feeling, of being trapped?” asked Orna. “Ask your subconscious mind to take you there. And trust it, the memory is there.”

“It’s when I was a child, in my parents’ home.”

“How old are you?”

“Twelve”

“Where are you?”

“In my room.”

“What are you wearing?”

“My pyjama”

“Are you sitting, or standing?”

“I’m sitting on the edge of my bed”

“Who else is there with you?”

“No-one else is in the room. My mom and dad are in the other room. They are fighting again. Mom is cursing Dad. Dad is calling her crazy.”

“What are the words coming to your mind when you hear them?”

“Someone please help me! I’m trapped in here. I want to go away…but there’s no-where to go…nothing I can do…”

Orna echoed Tammy’s words and asked her to repeat them again.

“Someone please help me! I’m trapped in here…no-where to go…nothing I can do”

“And again” Orna prompted her.

Tammy repeated the words, her feeling intensifying. She frowned and closed her fists, her shoulders lifting up close to the ears, and she rolled on the side in a fetal position. As instructed by Orna, she was consciously breathing in and out through her mouth. She was feeling the pain, without identifying with it. She was hurting, and pain was hers; but she was not identical with the pain. She was hurting, but not suffering.

Orna continued: “Now go even further back in time, to the first time you felt trapped, like a slave, like a hostage.”

Images started forming in Tammy’s mind, of places not from this life. She silently nodded to signal Orna that she had a memory show up.

“Where are you?” asked Orna

“In a prison cell.”

“Are you a man or a woman?”

“I’m a man”.

“How old are you?”

“Thirty six.”

“Who else is there with you?”

Tammy cringed and shuddered. “No-one…a rat…cockroaches…yuck!” She groaned in disgust.

Orna asked her to describe the prison cell with minute details.

“It’s dark. There’s only a tiny window with bars, high, close to the ceiling. I can’t reach it, I just see the blue sky through it. Not enough light. The floor is bare cement. I am sitting crouched, in a ball. I am wearing a dirty striped prison pyjama, and I am barefoot.”

“Do you see yourself from your own eyes, or from a side?”

“I look at myself from above. I can see myself sitting, embracing my bent legs, forehead resting on my knees.”

“I want you to merge with yourself, and look through your own eyes” prompted Orna.

Tammy groaned in pain. “I hate it. I…can’t…I feel cornered, trapped. I want out.!” Her head shook, as if to say “no” and her body rocked from side to side in visible discomfort.

“Tammy, you can come back here any time you want. You are safe. What do you want to do? Do you want to come back, or are you willing to go further and explore?”

“I’ll go back” replied Tammy, in pain but with determination.

Tell me what’s going on.

“The door never opens. There is an iron door with a window. The door never opens. Someone brings food through the window once a day.” A pause, and then Tammy relaxed: “My spirit is lifting towards the window. I am flying to the sky…”

“You are avoiding the feeling, Tammy. Are you willing to go back to your body?”

“Yes” Tammy replied reluctantly.

“Then go back.”

“I’m back. I can’t breathe. It feels like the walls are closing on me. The cell is so small…”

Orna repeated the words: “The walls are closing on me. The cell is so small!”

Tammy was breathing the mouth breath.

“That’s it, Tammy, bring this experience to its end. Feel it to its peak.”

Tammy groaned.

“What’s going on?”

“The rat…it bit me…on my throat. I’m dying…”

“Stay with it, and feel everything consciously, Tammy. Stay in your body, and breathe! Go all the way through the moment of death”

A last groan of pain, and Tammy’s contorted body suddenly relaxed.

“What is happening?”

“That’s it. I’m dead. I can see my lifeless body lying down, with blood all around the throat.”

“This was not a life worth living” proposed Orna. “What do you want to do with the body?”

“What do you mean?”

“Tammy, you are energy. You can do with the body as you please. It’s yours.”

“I want to take it out of there, outside, in the nature”

“Then go ahead and do it. And tell me what you are doing.”

Tammy’s voice became calm: “I am taking the body outside, away from the prison walls. There is an orchard by the river. I am taking the body to the water…wash it…cover it with a white cloth. I dig a grave in the grass, under a tree. It’s beautiful here. So beautiful…”

2 comments:

I truly enjoyed your story and story-telling, Tana. I am not a literary critic at all but I find this luminous, graphic and makes one feel transported all along to the peace and beauty of the ending. Congratulations, I didn't know of this side of you...!